Received March 18, 2020, accepted April 3, 2020, date of publication April 7, 2020, date of current version April

23, 2020.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2986329

Wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT),

Applications, Opportunities, and
Challenges: A Survey
F. JOHN DIAN1 , (Senior Member, IEEE), REZA VAHIDNIA 1, (Member, IEEE),
AND ALIREZA RAHMATI2
1 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, British Columbia Institute of Technology, Burnaby, BC V5G 3H2, Canada
2 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada
Corresponding author: Reza Vahidnia (rvahidnia@bcit.ca)
This work was supported by the British Columbia Institute of Technology Research Grant.

ABSTRACT Smart wearables collect and analyze data, and in some scenarios make a smart decision
and provide a response to the user and are finding more and more applications in our daily life. In this
paper, we comprehensively survey the most recent and important research works conducted in the area of
wearable Internet of Things (IoT) and classify the wearables into four major clusters: (i) health, (ii) sports and
daily activity, (iii) tracking and localization, and (iv) safety. The fundamental differences of the algorithms
associated within each cluster are grouped and analyzed and the research challenges and open issues in each
cluster are discussed. This survey reveals that although Cellular IoT (CIoT) has many advantages and can
bring enormous applications to IoT wearables, it has been rarely studied by the researchers. This article also
addresses the opportunities and challenges related to implementing CIoT-enabled wearables.

INDEX TERMS Smart wearables, Internet of Things, cellular IoT.

I. INTRODUCTION and optimization to the applications, enhance the quality of

IoT-enabled wearables are smart devices that can be worn
as external accessories, embedded in clothing and garments,
implanted in the body, or even adhered to or tattooed on
the skin. These devices are able to connect to the Internet
in order to collect, send data and receive the information
that can be used for smart decision making. These wearables
are becoming an increasingly important part of IoT tech-
nology and their development is moving from being simple
accessories to more specialized and practical applications.
Smart wearables can interact with an array of other devices,
such as smartphones, for the purpose of computing and
communication.
Due to mobility of the human and animals, smart wearable
devices are becoming increasingly important since they can
collect and send the data on the move and accordingly receive
information from the Internet which helps in making smarter
decisions. The use of smart wearables can bring efficiency
The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and
approving it for publication was Jingfeng Song . provides a survey of available products in the market as
life, and increase productivity or safety.
The advancements in low power mobile networks,
decrease in the size of electronic devices and sensors, as well
as the advantages that the smart wearables can provide have
enabled the development of wearable technology in a fast
pace. We have witnessed a rapid development of smart wear-
able products adapted for various applications during the past
few years. Smart watches, wrist bands, eye wears, headsets,
ear-buds, body straps, foot and hand worn devices, and smart
jewelries are some of the wearables that have been developed
for different applications (Figure 1).
Fitness activity trackers were the first big wave of wear-
able devices in the market followed by Bluetooth headsets,
smartwatches, and web-enabled glasses. The gaming industry
added more wearables, with virtual reality and augmented
reality headsets. However, the important life-altering appli-
cations in wearable technology is found mostly in health
monitoring and medical use cases.
There exist several other works that have looked into dif-
ferent aspects of wearable technologies. For example, [1]

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F. J. Dian et al.: Wearables and the IoT, Applications, Opportunities, and Challenges
FIGURE 1. Different wearables developed for various applications.
well as the research prototypes. The authors in [2] surveyed
all the existing electronic components used in the design
of garments used in wearable devices. The article in [3]
presents a survey of the sensors used in wearable devices.
However, to the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first
survey about the IoT-enabled wearables applications, oppor-
tunities and challenges where we focus on various clusters
of smart wearables and classify the existing applications of
these devices by addressing the fundamental differences of
the algorithms associated within a specific application in
each cluster. We also study the applications, opportunities
and challenges of cellular IoT in more details as the authors
believe that cellular IoT can be a game changer in the area of
IoT-based wearable technology.
Since wearable IoT devices are battery operated, power
consumption is considered as an important design factor.
However, this does not mean that a wearable device cannot
perform complex processing or it is limited in the amount of
data that transmits due to extensive amount of power that in
these situations will be consumed. In general, if the wearable
IoT device performs a large amount of processing or transmits
large amount of data, then its battery needs to be charged more
frequently. This is quite possible in many applications and use
cases. For instance, in a situation that the wearable IoT device
is used to detect fall, the device might be worn during the time
that the wearer is not asleep and can be charged during his/her
sleep time. By the same token, the wearable IoT devices that
are used during a sport activity, can drain the battery during
the length of the activity which is usually a few hours and can
easily get charged afterwards. It is clear that if a wearable IoT
device is used to find the trajectory of a bird within a year,
we not only need to limit the amount of processing and data
transmission, but also try to find energy harvesting methods
to increase the duration of battery life cycle.
Wearable IoT technology can bring endless opportunities
for many applications. However, the true power of wearable
IoT will be realized when there will be an integrated IoT sys-
tem available. For this reason, most of the existing research
papers connect to the Internet in one of the following two
forms. First, the wearable IoT sends its data to the cloud or
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a server on the Internet to be saved for offline processing in
future. The second form is to offload some of the computing
from the wearable device. In this form, the wearable IoT
device sends its data to the Internet for online processing and
consequently the IoT device will receive some information
that helps the IoT device to operate. The prevalence of wear-
able IoT can be fully recognized when we have integrated
IoT platforms and when many issues regarding data owner-
ship, policies on sharing data, privacy and safety issues are
resolved.
The majority of the research works in the area of wearable
IoT use unlicensed short range communication technologies
such as WiFi and Bluetooth mainly to monitor the user’s
health, activity, location and ensure his or her safety. How-
ever, the application of such solutions is limited to the use of
a gateway or mobile device to connect to the Internet. By the
emergence of cellular IoT technologies (e.g., LTE-M and NB-
IoT) introduced in 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)
Release 13, new methods and applications are expected to be
proposed for wearable IoT devices. In this paper, we reviewed
the opportunities and challenges associated with cellular
IoT-based wearables.
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows.
In Section II, we survey and classify the applications of smart
wearables. Section III discusses the use of cellular IoT (CIoT)
in smart wearables. In Section IV, the open research chal-
lenges associated with wearable IoT is discussed. Future
directions and conclusions are presented in Section V.
II. WEARABLE IOT CLASSIFICATION
To classify the applications of wearable IoT, and complete
this survey, first, the state-of-the-art research works, papers
and articles in this area were collected. This work is done
by searching databases such as IEEE Xplore and Association
for Computing Machinery (ACM) digital libraries. Then the
related works are categorized in clusters according to their
application and each research paper is placed in one of the
clusters as shown in Figure 2. It is seen that for some of the
clusters, there are a broader range of applications mostly due
to their importance. Besides the main clusters, there are other
wearable IoT devices that are used in other applications such
as virtual games in order to enhance gaming experience, pay-
ment applications, and education. Investigating these other
use cases are out of the scope of this survey.
In the following sections, each category is presented by
listing the most significant published work.
A. HEALTH
The health wearable IoT device is mainly used for remote
patient monitoring, treatment and in some cases for reha-
bilitation purposes. The sensors collect the health-related
data and the device may perform limited computation prior
to transmitting the user/patient’s health information to the
the Internet for further analysis. The device may also
receive data to enable the user make further decisions.
In many applications, the wearable devices are connected to
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FIGURE 2. Most researched wearable IoT application clusters.
smartphones to analyze the collected data and then transmit
it to a cloud computing-based framework such as Microsoft
Azure or Amazon Web Services (AWS) in order to store, pro-
cess, and analyze the data. Mobile health applications can be
used to visualize the analyzed data and provide insight about
the user/patient’s health. Moreover, in treatment applications,
the analyzed data can be used to send special commands to
the wearable such as heating up the body or applying a shock.
1) HEALTH TREATMENT & REHABILITATION WEARABLE
SYSTEMS
The IoT rehabilitation devices help disabled patients to main-
tain and improve their physical or mental abilities. In [4], a
walker-based system for physiotherapy purposes is proposed
which continuously monitors and evaluates the movement
metrics of the walker and sends them to the cloud where
data is analyzed, and the results are presented on a mobile
application. An IoT-based armband for stroke rehabilitation
is introduced by [5]. The wearable system measures the
bio-potential signals and the analyzed data is transmitted
wirelessly to a robot hand. Then, the received signals are
interpreted using a machine learning algorithm to give users
insight and feedback about their muscle movements. The
robot hand assists the user in adjusting his/her posture and
walking pattern in real time.
In [6], the researchers have designed a smart wheelchair
which allows the disabled person to easily interact with the
wheelchair via a mobile application that analyzes the data
received from the sensors, and then visualizes the results
for caregivers to remotely monitor the patient. The publi-
cation in [7], introduces a rehabilitation system which is
designed and implemented to help stoke patients suffering
from upper limb disability. This rehabilitation system exploits
IoT through integrating gaming and wearable technology.
2) HEALTH MONITORING WEARABLE SYSTEMS
Depending on the type of sensors, the health monitoring
wearables are classified into four major categories [8]:
1) Bio-potential sensors: electroencephalography (EEG),
electrocardiography (ECG), electromyography (EMG), and
photoplesmography (PPG) and etc.
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FIGURE 3. Taxonomy of wearable health care IoT sensors.
2) Motion sensors: accelerometer and gyroscope.
3) Environmental sensors: ultrasound, pressure, tempera-
ture and etc.
4) Biochemical sensors: transdermal glucose.
Analyzing the aforementioned signals gives extensive
insight about the health status of the patient/user.
The figure below shows the taxonomy of the use cases
for non-invasive wearable IoT sensors excluding implantable
sensors [9].
Pulse rate can be read using wearables on the chest, wrist,
earlobe, fingertip, and more via PPG, pressure, and radio
frequency (RF). In [10], a monitoring wearable device is
designed to detect the unambiguous changes in the heartrate.
The wearable alerts the user by a vibration to take the nec-
essary medicine. The researchers in [11] proposed a mul-
tisensory wearable system to collect the necessary data in
order to warn the user of an impending cardiac arrest in
the early stages. A low power communication module use
a smartphone to collect the body temperature and heart rate
and then signal processing techniques and machine learning
algorithms are used to accurately diagnose and warn sudden
cardiac arrests. The work done in [12], presents a system
dedicated to monitoring the heart activity parameters using
ECG mobile devices and sensors inserted in the fabric of the
clothes. The assessed parameters are heart rate and respira-
tion.
The wearables equipped with thermistor nasal sensor can
measure the respiratory rate. The sensor counts the number of
breaths taken by sensing the rise and fall of the temperature if
the air exhaled [13]. In [14], a smart IoT solution is proposed
for patients with asthma to measure their respiration rate. The
measured data is securely sent to the cloud where the patient’s
information is analyzed. This system uses watermarking and
signal enhancement techniques to secure the data transmis-
sion. In [15], using adhesive hydrogel, electrodes are placed
on human chest to detect the pulsatile vibration created as a
result of respiration. The proposed system is capable to be
worn or attached to the user’s shirt or chest belt. Then, col-
lected data is digitized and wirelessly sent using an impulse
radio ultra-wideband transmitter which operates in 3.1 to
5 GHz frequency range. Due to its small size, light weight,
low cost and low power signal processing circuitry the pro-
posed respiration monitoring system has gained attention by
other researchers. In [16], the researchers have designed a
portable wearable IoT device to monitor the respiratory rate
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where the sensor is implemented in a smart vest to constantly TABLE 1. Summary of healthcare IoT sensors in the literature.
monitor Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
patients at home during the rest period between respiratory
rehabilitation exercises. This total solution system also pro-
vides an e-health platform based on the Internet of Medical
Things (IoMT) paradigm.
The body temperature is typically measured by thermistor-
type sensors to detect the conditions such as hypothermia,
heat stroke and fevers. In [17], a wearable, IoT cloud-based
system is presented for real-time personal health monitoring.
The collected data from the sensors can be viewed both on
a cloud dashboard as well as an embedded display on the
wearable. In [18], a tablet-shaped ingestible sensor is devel-
oped to measure the core-body temperature based on gastric
acid power generation. A custom integrated circuit (IC) is
prototyped which could wirelessly receive the temperature
data transferred by a tablet-shape device of diameter 10mm
and height 8mm.
Blood pressure (BP) is not considered a vital health sign
and is frequently measured alongside the other three vital
signs (i.e., pulse, respiratory and temperature). While most
BP wearable devices are non-invasive, they are still obstruc-
tive. In many cases a chest wearable ECG is connected to the
other sensors with some wires. As far as we are concerned
there is no comfortable wearable device developed to contin-
uously measure the BP with high accuracy. In [19], a survey
on commercial wearable IoT devices to monitor the BP from
a metrological point of view is presented. In this survey the
lack of the traceability and reliability of the BP measurements
is addressed.
Pulse oximeter sensors measure the blood oxygen using
PPG signals. The most widely used form of such sensors embedded into this platform to automatically evaluate speech
are the wrist-wearable pulse oximetry wearables. In [20], information without the need to preserve raw audio data.
a non-invasive wearable cardiac monitoring and alert sys- A summary of the aforementioned articles about healthcare
tem is proposed which can continuously measure the car- IoT sensors in given in Table 1.
diac values and using pulse oximetry. This solution detects
the saturation level of oxygen as well as blood volume B. ACTIVITY RECOGNITION AND SPORTS
variations in the tissues. The heart rate is obtained through This category is related to applications where the wearables
filtering and processing the sensed signals. The mobile com- are worn during sport activities to record different metrics
munication and GPS system enable emergency alerts when of the user/athlete activity in order to improve his/her per-
the measured cardiac values are out of the threshold val- formance Also, applications of this cluster consider gath-
ues. Moreover, the system gives this opportunity to the ering data regarding the recognition of daily activities of
user to self-trigger the alert system through Google voice humans and animals. Although activity recognition can have
assistant. some applications in medical diagnostics and out-of-hospital
Some other wearable sensors with applications in health- health-care, the applications belonging in this cluster cover
care could measure the blood glucose. For example, in [21], use cases beyond health category.
an ingestible smart drug is designed which circulates in the In this section, we discuss the use of wearable IoT for two
body and senses the glucose level by passing IR radiation. related activities. The first set of activities belong to recog-
The measured blood glucose level is then transmitted to the nition of daily physical activities [23] and the second one is
smartphone wirelessly. Another application of IoT wearable related to activities that are related to specific sports [24]. The
devices is in mental wellbeing monitoring where physiolog- recognition of daily physical activities is usually dedicated
ical signs are collected through behavioral traits. In [22], to tracking routines and body movement related to skeletal
an IoT-based wearable social sensing platform is developed muscles such as walking forward, walking backward, jog-
through integrating behavior monitoring, privacy audio fea- ging, sleeping, running, going up or down the stairs, bending
ture, and environment sensing in a naturalistic environment. waist, frontal elevation of arms, bending knees, and jumping
In particular, privacy protected audio-wellbeing features are front or back. It also includes recognition of static postures

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 F. J. Dian et al.: Wearables and the IoT, Applications, Opportunities, and Challenges
such as sitting, sitting and relaxing, standing, laying down or
the recognition of going from one posture to another such as
going from standing posture to sitting one.
Generally speaking, IoT can bring an abundance of oppor-
tunities for sport players, organizations and fans to increase
their efficiency and offerings by creating an environment in
which athletes can receive better training or have access to
data that helps to keep them healthier, coaches are able to
analyze injuries or find metrics on player performance, and
organizations can offer fan engagement strategies or allow
fans to receive personalized offering from their favorite team.
Wearable IoT is a game changer in sport activities. However,
the use of wearable IoT is currently limited due to some
leagues regulations and some challenges that need to be
resolved. Yet, as more and more organizations recognize the
advantages that IoT wearables can provide to players, coaches
and fans, we will see that wearable IoT devices become
more and more prevalent in sports. Even though, wearable
IoT can provide endless opportunities to sports as explained
above, in this section, we discuss those papers that are related
to recognition of activities for specific sports such as ski-
ing, climbing, martial arts, tennis, swimming, badminton,
weightlifting, or baseball. It should be mentioned that the
other opportunities mentioned above have not received much
attention.
The human physical activity detection has found lots of
attention [25]–[30], [23]. To detect human physical activity
one or more sensors are installed on one or several wearable
devices attached to the body. These sensors generate signals
that can be analyzed to detect the type of activity and find the
information that differentiates various activities. The existing
methods usually achieve this goal in four stages. The first
stage is pre-processing, noise cancelation and signal range
adjustment which prepares the signal for the next stages.
The second stage is feature extraction in which the fea-
tures or parameters specific to the signal are extracted. The
extracted features can usually be categorized as structural
features or statistical ones. The structural features find the
correlation among different signals. The statistical features
can be found through time- or transformed-domain analysis
of a signal. Example of statistical features are mean value,
max value, peak, and size of signal. The transformation
typically used for finding the statistical features are Fourier
Transform (FT) [31], [32], Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT)
[33], or Wavelet Transform (WT). The third stage is feature
reduction which tries to find most important features that
can be used in final stage by removing the redundant and
irrelevant information. Classification is the last stage in which
the reduced set of features are clustered to find patterns
among various activities using a classification algorithm.
Classification algorithms can be done using the probability
of an activity according to a set of features and their prob-
abilities [34], the simulates between features according to a
dataset, transformation of features to a space that can help
in identifying the type of activity [35], [36], hierarchy based
model to map the features to activities based on a decision
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tree [37]–[39], or artificial neural network and machine learn-
ing algorithm [40], [41].
For sport activities, measuring and estimating the perfor-
mance or efficiency of actions related to specific sport and
providing feedback on parameters such as timing, angle or
amount of applying or releasing a force can help improve the
accuracy and performance. Using these techniques, players
can get real-time feedback of their performance and improve
their performance to make it more consistent. There are many
papers that discuss the use of wearable devices for improving
the quality of activities of a specific sport or even making the
wearer do something that would not be possible without wear-
ing the wearable device. The wearer usually receives a mes-
sage to help him/her to understand the quality of performance
or provide help on how to proceed. These messages might be
seen on the screen of the wearable or on displays in some
other places. The wearer also may receive the messages or an
indication of a message using audio or haptics. The perfor-
mance of activities related to many different sports have been
researched such as badminton [42], [43], basketball [44],
[45], rowing [46], [47], swimming [48], [49], hockey [50],
skiing [51], [52], martial art [53], [35], weightlifting [54],
tennis [55], baseball [56] and golf [57], [58].
C. TRACKING AND LOCALIZATION
This category, is used mainly for tracking human and animal,
to determine their location online. Finding the position of
a person or animal who is wearing a wearable device is
important in many applications. Studying the trajectory trip of
a bird, finding the location of a senior citizen in a care-home
facility, analyzing the movement of the people who are vis-
iting an exhibition, or pet tracking are some examples of
these applications. A comprehensive study on localization
using IoT technology is published in [59], but the study does
not concentrate on wearable IoT. In general, the localization
methods discussed in literature can be divided into two main
categories. The ones that use offline training and the ones
that without using offline training can determine the location.
The training dependent methods can be classified into three
clusters: 1) Fingerprinting 2) Stochastic-oriented models and
3) Machine learning based schemes. Fingerprinting has been
studied extensively using various types of signals includ-
ing general signal pattern, audio signal, video signal and
motion [60], [61]. General signal pattern usually depends
on the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) value of
the wireless signal in which the location fingerprint is found
through site survey and is recorded in a fingerprint data
base. This fingerprint information is used later by a localiza-
tion algorithm online to estimate the location. Fingerprinting
can be used on visual information captured by a camera or
audio signals captured by a microphone. The IoT devices can
also use collaborative localization methods that are based on
mutual position measurement of each IoT device as well as
the relative distance of devices.
The non-training dependent category of localization
method can also be divided into various clusters. The main
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F. J. Dian et al.: Wearables and the IoT, Applications, Opportunities, and Challenges
FIGURE 4. Simulation results showing the accuracy of positioning in
LTE-M networks using Release 13 and Release 14.
cluster includes the methods that use geometric information
to estimate the location based on multi-lateration, triangula-
tion, region overlapping and other geometric related meth-
ods [62]–[66]. The other clusters of non-training category are
mobility, path planning and statistical [59].
A method used in cellular IoT 3rd Generation Partnership
Project 3GPP Release 14 for location estimation based on
geometric cluster is Observed Time Difference of Arrival
(OTDOA). 3GPP Release 13 does not provide any positioning
information other than Cell Identity (CID), which indicates
the cell that the IoT device is located at. In Release 14 not only
development support for the feature of OTDOA is presented,
but also the standard introduces enhancements to complete
the User Equipment (UE) measurement requirements for
enhanced CID. Note that OTDOA is a downlink-based posi-
tioning technique where an IoT device measures the times of
arrival of the Positioning Reference Signals (PRSs) received
from several nodes relative to a reference node’s PRS trans-
mission to form the reference signal time difference (RSTD)
measurements. The RSTD measurements are then translated
into a geographical hyperbola where the positioned UE is
considered to reside. By considering multiple RSTD mea-
surements, the UE position can be estimated to be at the
crossover point of the corresponding hyperbolas. By mea-
suring horizontal position error of the LTE-M network as
shown in Figure 4, we can show the cumulative distribution
function (CDF) of horizontal error position. It is clear that by
using LTE-M network a resolution of approximately 50m is
achievable horizontally which is suitable for many wearable
applications.
D. SAFETY
This category belongs to the wearables that are used to pro-
vide safe environment for the users. For instance, a fatigue
monitoring system can notify the alert the drivers who fall
asleep at the wheel and notify the employers. Or as another
example, the wearable devices can collect the air quality data
in the mines to assure the worker’s health and reduce risks for
miners and costs for employers. Fall prevention and detection
especially in elderly people are a major problem and there are
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many applications that wearable devices are used to detect or
prevent the falls.
The wearable IoT sensors intended for safety mostly focus
on three main applications: 1) fall detection and prevention
2) drowsiness fatigue detection 3) environmental condition
monitoring.
1) FALL DETECTION AND PREVENTION
Accidental fall is a major issue for elder people. Even if
a fall is not fatal, the effect of a fall degrades the quality
of life substantially. To constantly monitor for fall events,
the use of wearable devices are more applicable as compared
to the other methods which use a fixed infrastructure such
as fixed camera [67]–[69] or smart tile [70] due to lack of
limitation in location determination or even scene blocking
for those using camera. We hereunder discuss the literature
that use wearable IoT for the purpose of fall detection or
prediction.
To be able to detect fall usually the inertial sensors such
as gyroscope or accelerometer are used. The fall detection
system must be fast enough to detect fall fast to be ben-
eficial. However, in order to detect fall events accurately
and minimize false positive, the fall detection system must
differentiate between a fall and other daily activities [71].
This can be done by finding parameters such as body posture,
falling speed or angular velocity [72], [73]. It should be noted
that some of these parameters not only vary from person to
person, but also change with aging [74]. Therefore, to be able
to detect falls correctly, the fall detection algorithms need
substantial computation. The fundamental idea behind most
fall detection and prevention algorithms is to use the motion
information to differentiate between a fall and other types of
daily activities. A fall can be characterized as an involuntary
move which is not performed in a controlled manner and
causes abrupt motion with fast speed. The most popular meth-
ods for fall prevention are threshold-based schemes in which
the motion information such as vertical speed profile are
compared with a set of threshold values to detect whether the
person is stable, has fallen, or is about to fall. The threshold
values can be fixed or adaptive values. In general, the fix
value thresholds result in lower computational complexity,
and lower performance as compared to the adaptive threshold
schemes.
Adaptive thresholds can be dynamically calculated based
on history and processing of individual data movement
and motion information [75]–[77] or based on clustering
of people according to their gender, height, weight and
age [78]. In [79] pretested reference templates for each
type of fall using comparison between the angles and
angular velocities of the thigh segment between falls and
normal activities are used for fall detection. Some other
papers suggest the use of machine learning for this pur-
pose [80]–[82] such as using [83]–[85] the Support Vector
Machine (SVM) via feature selection procedures among a
number of raw signals from the gyroscope and accelerometer
sensors.
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2) DROWSINESS-FATIGUE-DETECTION
In general, the drowsiness detection techniques and alerting
systems can be classified into five categories as 1) image
processing-based, 2) EEG-based, 3) artificial neural network-
based, 4) vehicular-based and 5) subjective measures [86].
In all these techniques, powerful processors are required to
process the complex computations and detect drowsiness or
fatigue. Another alternative is to send the raw data into the
cloud and put the burden of processing on the shoulders of
the power servers.
In [87], a drowsiness-fatigue-detection solution to increase
road safety is proposed. The system is based on wear-
able smart glasses and is composed of a pair of wearable
smart glasses, an in-vehicle infotainment telematics plat-
form, an onboard diagnostics-II-based automotive diagnos-
tic bridge, an active vehicle rear light alert mechanism,
and a cloud-based management platform. The detection sys-
tem is capable to detect whether the driver is drowsy or
tired in real time and once such a condition is detected,
the other drivers are automatically alerted through the
active vehicle real light alert mechanism. The collected
data is also concurrently sent to a cloud-based management
platform.
In [88], to detect the sleepy workers a low-cost EEG-based
system is proposed. The modified safety smart helmet is worn
by the worker and transmits the data to a local server which
runs a random forest classifier algorithm to verify if the sleep
condition is sever to alert the shift supervisor. If the worker
falls down, a single Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) sensor
can detect the fall. A mobile application is also designed
where the supervisor can constantly monitor the worker’s
status.
3) ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITION MONITORING
Hazardous environmental situations may result in serious
health problems and it is crucial to deploy fast response
systems in such environments to alert the workers. Moreover,
the data gathered by the environmental wearable sensors
provide useful insight about the environmental impact on
subjects’ health. The wearables may also be installed on vehi-
cles or animals to form a mobile wireless sensor networks to
predict hazardous conditions. For example the data gathered
from the animals in different farms may help scientist to
predict earthquake in a specific area.
The researchers in [89], presented a safety wearable
equipped with a self-powered sensor network which uses
Maximum Power Point Control (MPPT) solar energy har-
vesting, several low power environmental sensing nodes,
and unlicensed log range wireless modules (i.e., LoRa). The
wearable sensors measure the temperature, relative humidity,
and ultraviolet (UV) index in the surrounding area. The col-
lected measurements are sent to a gateway and a cloud server
through a LoRa connectivity system.
In [90], a wearable safety application is proposed to detect
hazardous conditions in the early stages and alert the work-
ers. The system detects CO2, the temperature and relative
69206
humidity and then the data is communicated using an XBee
DigiMesh module.
In [91], a wearable environmental sensor network to moni-
tor the urban environment is presented. The system has seven
environmental sensors including infrared temperature sensor,
atmospheric pressure, accelerometer, temperature, relative
humidity, ambient light, and IMU and the wireless commu-
nication is through Wi-Fi. The power consumption of the
system is so low that the rechargeable battery may last up
to seven days. The authors in [92], present a low-power
wearable sensor network which measures CO2 concentration,
the Earth’s magnetic field, temperature and relative humidity.
The communication scheme of this sensor network is based
on Bluetooth technology.
E. OTHERS
Besides the four main clusters discussed so far, there are
some papers that have used wearable IoT technology for
other applications such as education [93], [94], virtual and
augmented reality [95], [96], law enforcement [97], or spy-
ing [98]. Since there have not been lots of attention by the
research community for these applications, we do not further
discuss these use cases.
III. CIOT-ENABLED WEARABLE
We found that use of CIoT wearable has not received enough
attention in the literature. In most cases the connection to the
Internet for the wearable device is through the technologies
such as Wi-Fi or Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). The use of
these two technologies which exist in any cellphone device
has been discussed in many papers. The fact that all people
carry a cellphone these days, even though not completely true,
has become the assumption that has been used in many papers
as justification for using cellphone as part of connectivity
to the Internet. We have studied BLE technology and its
practical strengths and limitations extensively [99]–[107] and
believe that BLE is one of the enablers of IoT technology
that has a good potential to be used in wearable devices. But,
it is quite possible that CIoT will be the most widely used
technology in the future for wearable devices. We believe the
use of cellular IoT will be increased in a fast pace in future
years and it will replace other types of IoT communication
technologies such as Wi-Fi, or unlicensed Low Power Wide
Area Networks (LPWAN) solutions (e.g., LoRa and Sigfox)
in many use cases.
It is shown in the past that if the cost of equipment as well as
data plan for cellular systems implemented by telecommuni-
cation companies are decreased, the users tend to prefer to use
cellular technology. For example, in 90’s when telecommuni-
cation companies provided cellphones with limited incoming
and outgoing voice usage hours in their plan, the users would
use cellphones mostly outside of their homes and offices,
where landline systems were not available. As telecommu-
nication companies reduced the price and offered unlimited
calls during evenings and weekends and consequently unlim-
ited incoming and outgoing voice calls, users showed interest
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F. J. Dian et al.: Wearables and the IoT, Applications, Opportunities, and Challenges
FIGURE 5. Major challenges of wearable IoT technology.
to use their cellphone even in places where landline systems
were available. We have seen the same user behavior in data
usage over the Internet. In the past, due to the cost of data
usage and communication speed, users preferred to switch to
Wi-Fi and connect to hotspots instead of cellular connection.
However, as the cost of data usage is decreasing, more and
more mobile users use their cellular connection to connect to
the Internet in places where Wi-Fi connection is also avail-
able. Therefore, while there exist some IoT enabling tech-
nologies today that may be used for wearable devices in local
area or solve the wide area coverage requirement of the IoT
devices by using a cellular connection through a cellphone,
they fall short as compared to two existing CIoT technologies
of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), which are
LTE-M and Narrow Band IoT (NB-IoT) in terms of coverage,
scalability, interoperability, QoS, and security. LTE-M and
NB-IoT are introduced in Release 13 of LTE technology.
In LTE Release, 14, and 15, the enhancements of LTE IoT
continued to provide cellular IoT connectivity to more IoT
devices and in more diverse applications. It should be noted
that the performance of CIoT will further hugely be advanced
with more implementation of 5G cellular technology.
IV. IOT- ENABLED WEARABLE CHALLENGES AND
FUTURE POSSIBILITIES
The major challenges of the wearable IoT devices as shown
in Figure 5, are listed below:
1) DATA RESOLUTION OF WEARABLE SENSORS
Since it is of high importance that the wearable device must
be comfortable when worn by the user and should consume
low amount of energy, they are typically small in size and
the sensors have lower resolution compared to non-wearable
devices.
2) POWER CONSUMPTION
To minimize the human interaction and for wearable devices
to operate for long hours without replacing or charging
the battery, special considerations are to be taken into
account while designing the wearables. For example, low
power consumption systems or energy harvesting techniques
VOLUME 8, 2020
such as micro-magneto-electric, thermoelectric, piezoelec-
tric, or photoelectric harvesting methods are some possible
options used in [108]. Among all energy harvesting methods,
solar energy is considered as a strong candidate as it provides
the highest power density. The disadvantage of solar energy
is its limitation to day times and outdoor places.
3) WEARABILITY
The wearable IoT devices have to be comfortable when worn
by the user. It is important that they are light and designed
in such a way that they do not disturb the normal activi-
ties of the user. The tradeoff between the complexity of the
computations and the weight of the wearable is one of the
major challenges. In [109], the idea of smart clothing or
wearable 2.0 for human-cloud integration is introduced which
tries to solve the problem with discomfort caused by wearing
multiple sensors in different part of the body for health care
application.
4) SAFETY
All wearable IoT devices use wireless technologies to trans-
mit their sensed data to another node, gateway or a base
station. This wireless transmission involves radiofrequency
radiation which could have negative impact on the user’s
health because the transceiver antennas are very close to
his/her body. In those wearables that are worn on the head
or eyes the radiation risks could be significantly higher. This
safety concern is well addressed in [110] by reviewing the
standard limits of human exposure to radio frequency elec-
tromagnetic energy and analyzing the radiation level of CIoT
antennas. It is shown that the problem can be worse when
the wearable CIoT device is transmitting in areas with poor
coverage.
5) SECURITY
The complexity of the wearable IoT devices is typically
reduced due to lightweight and less power consuming
designs. Consequently, there could be less strong security fea-
tures on such devices. One of the challenges in wearable IoT
devices is how to implement security policies while keeping
the complexity of the system as low as possible. In general,
wearables are easy hacking targets due to poor encryption and
protection.
6) REGULATION
There is currently a limitation in using wearable IoT devices
in many industries due to lack of existence of proper regu-
lations. For example, in sports fields and arenas, the use of
wearable IoT devices are technologically feasible, but it is
not being used due to the leagues regulations.
7) PRIVACY
The constant exchange of personal data such as vital health
signals, dosage, and location between the wearable and the
IoT hub can create an environment for privacy breaches.
Typically, wearable IoT devices are on broadcast mode which
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makes them easily discoverable by other nodes in the net-
work. Unauthorized nodes can steal the personal data if
appropriate privacy policies are not applied. In such broadcast
modes, the built-in hardware security technology of the IoT
devices might not guarantee the protection of personal data
against breaches. In [111] a broadcast-subscriber IoT model
is proposed where the users’ personal data are only shared
with intended nodes such as healthcare facilities or devices
authorized by the user.
There will be enormous number of applications and oppor-
tunities for wearable IoT devices. Using 3D printing, the next
generation of these wearables will be boosted by lateraliza-
tion of their design, fabrication, and distribution. For example
by using this technology for health application, the patient
can upload their disease profiles and download his/her indi-
vidualized treatment tools to print them at home with low
cost. By improvement in new energy harvesting technologies
and existence of longer life batteries, the greater computa-
tional power will be allowed in wearable IoT devices. This
increases their autonomy, implementation of feature extrac-
tion and classification and/or prediction, and allows an effi-
cient employment of hardware resources. The most important
opportunity in werable IoT will be realized when IoT data
from various sources and devices are combined there will be
an integrated IoT system available.
V. CONCLUSION
Wearable IoT can offer endless new opportunities in many
real-life applications. This paper provided a survey on the
most important efforts of the research community in the area
of wearable and IoT. After identifying more than one hundred
papers as the significant literature in this area, the papers were
analyzed and divided in four major clusters based on their
applications. The methods used for each cluster also were
grouped.
Wearables have lots of potential when integrated IoT sys-
tem becomes available. For this reason the true power of
combining wearable and IoT has not been recognized. Also
cellular IoT can revolutionize the wearable IoT industry
which at this point has not received lots of attention among
research community.
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F. JOHN DIAN (Senior Member, IEEE) received
the B.Sc. and M.S. degrees from Tehran Poly-
technics, Tehran, in 1990 and 1994, respectively,
and the Ph.D. degree from Concordia University,
Montreal, in 2004, all in electrical and computer
engineering. He has over 20 years of experience
in the areas of design and consulting with various
companies. Since 2010, he has been a Faculty
Member with the School of Energy, Department
of Electrical and Computer Engineering, British
Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), Vancouver, Canada. His research
interests include the IoT, multimedia processing for telecommunication
applications, and big data.
VOLUME 8, 2020
REZA VAHIDNIA (Member, IEEE) was born in
Tehran, Iran. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc.
degrees in electrical engineering from Tehran
and Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran,
in 2006 and 2009, respectively, and the Ph.D.
degree from Ontario Tech University, Oshawa,
Canada, in 2014. From 2014 to 2015, he was
a Postdoctoral Fellow with Ryerson University,
where he conducted research on energy harvesting
systems. Since 2016, he has been a Senior Internet
of Things (IoT) Specialist with Rogers Communications Inc., and TELUS.
He is currently a Faculty Member with the Department of Electrical and
Computer Engineering, British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT),
Vancouver, Canada. His research interests include wireless communications,
the IoT, and signal processing.
ALIREZA RAHMATI was born in Tehran, Iran.
He received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engi-
neering from the Sharif University of Technol-
ogy, Tehran, in 2004, and the Ph.D. degree in
telecommunication systems engineering from Tar-
biat Modares University, Tehran, in 2012. He was
with Ryerson University, from 2016 to 2018. From
2007 to 2015, he was with the Research and Elec-
tronic Center Artaaira, Tehran. He is currently a
Postdoctoral Fellow with the Department of Elec-
trical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo. His main research
interests include statistical signal processing, the Internet of things, 5G
networks, and full-duplex radio.
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